Arisia 2012 and more...
Here are the "BTs"--most of my girl friends here in the Framingham/Boston/etc. area at
Arisia 2012. It's a Science Fiction/Fantasy convention in Boston every January. This was my first year going. This picture was taken Saturday. I was wearing my pirate/wench outfit, Cheryl was wearing her light-up lips shirt--
--oh yeah! Now I know why my mouth was open! Her shirt lights up in reaction to sound. We were all making a loud sort of open-mouthed humming sound so that her shirt would light up. Anyway, this pictures was taken in the suite that a bunch of us shared. I had a small air mattress that was underfilled the first night, so I had a sore back, but after that we got it firm and after the second night I was fine.
I met a lot of cool people, went to several neat panels. One of which was on why you should not self-publish your book except as a very last resort. That's good to know, since I'm about to start editing my novel, then it's time to find an agent and try to publish that puppy.
One bad thing about the weekend was that my phone was nearly dead when I drove over to Matt's house. I was going to ride into Boston with Matt and another guy so that I wouldn't have to pay full price for gas, tolls, and parking, but rather just chip in with a couple of other people. So anyway, my phone. I plugged it into the phone charger and put it in the pocket of my purse, but it was really straining the length of the charger cable, and I was afraid it would pull away from the plug (my GPS always comes unplugged from the slightest pull on the cord) and so I took the phone out of my purse and set it on the seat, figuring I'd see it and remember it.
Well, I didn't. I got to Matt's house, grabbed my purse, popped the trunk to grab my little suitcase, and that was that. We were almost all the way into Boston before I realized my phone was still in my car. It made meeting up with people tricky at the convention, but I managed.
On the first night there, Melissa and I spent a while in the room making iron-on Omega Mu t-shirts (from Revenge of the Nerds) and so here's a picture of all of us wearing them:
There was a room with free food in it for anyone at the convention, but it was almost always just crackers and pieces of bread. One time there was cheese, but that was just one time. On one of my trips to that room I took what appeared to be a piece of pumpernickel bread, but what tasted like it was made/flavored with NyQuil. It was gross. I was hungry, though, so I ate it anyway. Oh, and it was really dry, too.
Friday night and Saturday night there were several parties that we hit up, though one of them on Saturday night ("Barfleet"--supposedly somewhat Star Trek themed and with lots of free mixed drinks) was being broken up by the hotel management when we arrived at it. They were making everyone pour out their drinks and confiscating all the alcohol from the suite. Oh well. I wonder how much money they lost from that.
Anyway, later in the night we went to the big dances in the ballrooms. The one on Friday night wasn't as much fun as it would have been if I'd known the music. The one the second night I knew a lot more of the songs, but fewer of my friends were there, so it was a trade-off.
We did get one professional photo taken in our Omega Mu shirts:
I left with Matt on Sunday about 6pm. Several of the others stayed through Monday--I think the whole thing ended mid-afternoon on Monday. I had a good time. I went ahead and pre-purchased a ticket to next year's convention, because it was only $30 for the whole weekend, and if I can't make it up here when the time comes, they're transferable so I can just sell it to someone else.